


Patience

by bowlofsurreal



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Light Angst, Railroad Ending Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-28 21:11:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8463067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bowlofsurreal/pseuds/bowlofsurreal
Summary: Post-Synth Retention Nora/Gabriel if you squint. Guilty Workaholic!SS/Railroad Responsibility. Nora learns that death doesn't always look the same.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally filled on the FO KinkMeme.

Her heart was filled with Gabriel, however briefly she knew him in a flash of blue-white static, now dead and lost to the Commonwealth and all the men that knew him by name, by strength in God. Nora wondered if the Institute believed in higher beings, gods and goddesses, archangels and demons, or was Father their lord, they his angels and the Commonwealth their underworld? The unknown seediness of scavengers and mercenaries living by the skin of their teeth, hands reaching up to them like ghastly souls in the river Styx. Gabriel another fallen angel.

The green light of the terminal reflected harshly on her face. The floating town rocked back and forth on the water in the dark night, the pounding of rain on the boat’s roof. This shanty town was backed into a corner, just like any other, starving and desperate for a way to survive the brutality of the wasteland. The great heroes are no different than the pirates, she or Shaun no different than the trail of bodies that would rot in her wake. Violence was man’s most unwieldy tool, then and now, no less sure of it than the day that ego and greed dropped an atomic bomb on the life she left behind.

A flash of lightning illuminated the two bodies at her feet for just a moment—halos of blood pooling around their heads from the two shots from Nora’s pistol.

Loot in exchange for freedom, the bargain was common and naturally, amenable for Nora’s purposes. Bullets weren’t cheap and getting some gear off some raiders for nothing but peace was the amount of force that helped her break even. But with a courser at her back, she knew that negotiation was foreign to the Institute: the only option was mission objective. Completion was mandatory.

Resetting cognitive processes, X6 had called it, as if cleaning to some explicit clarity, to some resolute servitude, to some proper function as if there were one.

Mopping up the rest of the raiders on Libertalia after X6 disappeared with the rogue fell to Nora, as many dirty jobs did.

The road back home was long, and alone, Nora had extraordinary time to ponder the relative aftershock of her actions. Thousands of people in the moment of their death, their faces in agony or surprise, filed accordingly in the banks of her memories but for some reason, this one stuck, even without blood and plasma as sticky glue.

Her growing list of Railroad ops kept her busy and it was a week before she relayed to the Institute to catch up with Shaun. But there, standing near the entrance of the SRB, the body formerly known as Gabriel, mopping up some invisible spill that never, as far as Nora was concerned, coalesced into anything moppable.

She glanced at the shop and the spiral staircase leading up to Shaun’s quarters, but in a moment of recklessness, took a sharp right towards the SRB. As she approached, Gabriel was bathed in fluorescent light, mocking daylight integrity, cascading over him and the flowing water sparkling beneath the glass steps.

“Hey, hi.” How are you, what the fuck did they do to you, she wanted to shout, we’re getting you out of here, we’re getting you all out of here, just wait, just wait.

“Ma’am, hello.” Was it, could be. A quick turn around, the Institute had, lacking finesse and ethical grace. “Do you need assistance with something?”

“Um,” Nora looked around, at nothing, for nothing, as if she were committing some illicit act, fingering the buckles on her chest plate. “What’s your name?”

“My designation is B5-92, ma’am.”

Gabriel stared at her with new eyes, alert but hollow in their cautious appraisal of her. His long ashy blonde hair had been cut short to the scalp but those thin eyebrows sloped down at a familiar angle, the remarkably specific triangle of eye-eye-nose, but inside there was nothing that Nora could recognize.

Just wait, she continued to remind herself of Desdemona’s years-long plan to usurp from the inside, patience, just wait and revolution will come. Just wait, but for Gabriel, it was already too late.


End file.
